1. Skill Gap
CLOSING THE
How do you get more of your people to perform
in the ‘virtual CFO or virtual counsel arena?’
This is an area that causes major new business
strain for successful accountants and lawyers;
their ability to ‘push work down’ is directly
impeded by the lack of skill depth within their
team.
I’ve often spoken to accountants and lawyers
about ‘closing the skill gap’ but there are 3
things you should know before you embark on
solving this business restriction.
The gap only exists because you’ve prioritised
short term gain over longer term leverage; your
income and growth is now restricted in direct
correlation to the lack of coaching you’ve
provided to your team in the past.
Your ‘productivity’ measurement and reward
systems have also driven the behaviour of you
and your team. Having a ledger for ‘training and
development’ is one thing but if you don’t
budget time for your team to actually try the
‘stuff’ with clients then it’s all in vain.
Your clients need to get used to the idea of
leverage. They will sense every bit of nervous-
ness from your new ‘virtual CFO/counsel
manager’ and will struggle to see their value if
you drive ‘too hard and too fast’. (You didn’t
learn your skills overnight and neither will your
team)
My father often said, “You can’t make a
silk purse out of a sow’s ear”. So it is with
the development of people. In my early
ideological days of “empower everyone
and you’ll get a return” I would have
happily recommended coaching for all.
I was wrong.
Increasing Your Firms
Leverage

2. My father often said, “You can’t make a silk purse out of
a sow’s ear”. So it is with the development of people. In
my early ideological days of “empower everyone and
you’ll get a return” I would have happily recommended
coaching for all. I was wrong.
The trick is to identify those that are ready for develop-
ment and guide them towards the activities of the
organisation that is best suited to their personality type.
Failure to do this will create greater strain on the
individual and overload managers with repetitive
monitoring rather than ‘empowered learning’.
This requires a major ‘moral mind set’ shift as this theory
starts at the top and works its way down from Director
to Graduate. Let me explain...
Malcolm Gladwell (in his book “What the Dog Saw”)
raised the community issue of homeless people in New
York, research showed that of the quarter of a million
people that were homeless at some point in the previ-
ous 5 years, only 2500 were chronically homeless yet the
full cost of health care & social services to this minor
group was at least $62M annually!
The dilemma is that by treating these people ‘by the
normal rules’, society was burdened with a massive
financial expense ,yet if treated specific to their
condition, society was taking a moral position that a
chronic drunk should be given free food and accommo-
dation whilst other hard working citizens get no help at
all. Society’s inability to rationalise the unfairness and
identify that you can’t “paint everyone with the same
brush” wasted millions of dollars which could serve
many people more effectively.
So it is with Accounting and Legal partnerships.
The moral position that “we must all contribute in the
same way” or “We should all be responsible for equal
fee bases” locks people into defensive positions and
inhibits growth across the entire practice.
Such an expectation is driven by an ignorance of the
need to play people to their strengths at best,
Finder, Minder, Grinder
I have never seen anyone excel
at Finder-Grinder roles unless
they are forced to by virtue of
being a sole operator. (And in
this instance they don’t excel,
they cope)
FINDER, MINDER,
GRINDER
and at worst, by an arrogance of
“this is how it’s always been or my
way or the Highway”.
The sooner a practice accepts the
need for a balance of skill and
perception, achieved by various
personality types, the sooner they
can set about to meet the three
reasons they went into business
for themselves; Time, Control &
Money.
The two key objectives of an
accounting and legal practice is
“Get the Job & Do the Job". The
three domains of focus is “Finder,
Minder & Grinder”.
I believe people can excel at
Finder-Minder and Minder-
Grinder roles, I have never seen
anyone excel at Finder-Grinder
roles unless they are forced to by
virtue of being a sole operator.
(And in this instance they don’t
excel, they cope)
Everyone has a dominant
personality type, this type surfaces
at times of stress by way of
predictable behaviours as part of
their ‘coping mechanism’.
If you place someone in a role that
requires them to be assertive
(selling) and they are naturally
withdrawn (grinding) then you
expose both the individual and the
practice to risk.

3. The risks are that the individual
fails to deliver on sales targets
and therefore starves the firm of
work, whilst simultaneously over-
whelming the individual such that
they become ineffective not just
in the Finding arena, but the
Grinding arena also, due to guilt.
The order of creating an organisa-
tional structure which best serves
the practice and those within it, is
to identify the operational tasks
that are required to be completed
in order to meet (your) clients
expectations.
Then, match people to those
tasks by the following attributes;
Typology – Skills – Style – Focus.
Your practice HR development
then sits underneath but must be
matched to the following Ethos:
“”The practice is best served by
the best person for the role, if
such a person doesn’t currently
sit within the practice, go find
them”.
I believe the most cost effective
training comes from developing
team members within their
current range of engagements.
(It’s not too far from their
comfort zone)
I call this “Engagement Relative
Templates’.
The focus should be on coaching,
not presenting, which means
Instruction, Demonstration,
Focused Direction, Observation
and Re-direction.
Once coached effectively, the
team member should be
encouraged to focus their selling
and consultancy efforts within the
domain of ‘client permission’ so
they build stronger relations and
sound confidence and experience.
Typology—Skills—Style—
Focus
“”The practice is best served
by the best person for the
role, if such a person doesn’t
currently sit within the
practice, go find them”.
HR ETHOS
So with all that said, what are the basic steps you can
take to begin to ‘close the skill gap’ with your team?
 Determine the financial budget for coaching
(since this will direct much of your thinking in
terms of scale and logistics)
 Identify the directors that have ‘b or c’ clients and
have yet to fully scope the engagement with
those clients.
 Identify the managers that are of the correct
temperament (i.e. not just in the position
because they’ve been there ‘x’ number of years)
and express a desire to develop themselves.
 Quantify the number of hours that the director
will be available (on a weekly basis) to provide
basic mentoring / feedback (of a technical or
client background nature) to said managers.
 Quantify the number of ‘face to face’ hours
(weekly) that the managers will be required to
engage with ‘b or c’ clients as above.
 Identify the expectations around fee growth or
‘value add free time’. (Understand there is a cost
for everything in life. Time spent learning new
skills will provide greater opportunity to increase
director leverage in future but may mean a few
hours ‘written off’ whilst the manager is
developing their skills and resource)
 Determine the number of managers that are
provided for development and agree on the basis
of the training.

4. Mike Barnes
THE PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT COACH TO ACCOUNTANTS, LAWYERS & FINANCIAL ADVISERS.
Mike regularly consults throughout NZ to increase the leverage within professional
services firms and speaks on a variety of topics, including ‘Closing the Skill Gap’ and
‘What Blocks Professional’s From Selling’.
Mike considers himself a ‘coaching addict’ – “It’s WHO I am, not WHAT I do” explains
Mike, “It’s how I’m wired; it’s in every part of my life”.
Mike is a passionate exponent of The Enneagram Personality Profiling System, (He
attended in New York at the hands of the ‘masters’ Don Riso & Russ Hudson) which
allows Mike to explore the ‘blockages’ that stop people from reaching their own true
potential.
“I coach professionals to do the things they won’t do on their own” says Mike, “my
greatest sense of self-worth comes from watching others grow and knowing I played
a critical part in it”.
Engaged to the love of his life (Natalie) and so very proud of his 3 kids, Mike still finds
time to coach and mentor NZ’s fastest motocross riders. “It’s an extremely demand-
ing and dangerous sport and the professional riders I work with have everything on
the line every time they race. Want to learn how to focus the mind and overcome
fear? – you’ve come to the right place…”
“I coach
professionals to do
the things they won’t
do on their own”
COACH
“The learning from this has been amazing!” says Mike. “The very real threat of serious
injury combined with the pressure of being a professional athlete is the perfect place to
find what really works, and throws out all the garbage that most of the ‘self-help’ books
promote”.
MIKE & KAYNE